Jaguar Land Rover plans to allow valuable motorists to earn cryptocurrency

(Reuters) – Jaguar Land Rover, the UK's largest automaker, said on Monday that it was testing software that will allow drivers of its cars to earn IOTA cryptocurrency as a reward for sharing data.

The company is developing what it calls "smart wallet" technology to install in its automobiles. This would reward Jaguar drivers with IOTA parts to allow their vehicles to automatically report useful data, such as traffic jams or potholes, to shipping providers or local authorities.

Pilots could also win rewards if the car participated in a carpool program, Jaguar said. The chips earned could be used to pay tolls, parking and charging electric cars.

The overall goal was "to achieve zero emissions, zero accidents and zero congestion," the company said.

Global automakers are exploring blockchain applications and discovering different ways to leverage technology to meet their different needs. Blockchain, the system that powers crypto-currencies like Bitcoin, is a shared database managed by a network of computers connected to the Internet.

The UK automotive company is testing the technology at the new Jaguar Land Rover software engineering base in Shannon, Ireland, where engineers have already equipped several vehicles, including the Jaguar F-PACE and Range Rover Velar, with "Smart wallet". I said.

Jaguar, a subsidiary of Tata Motors, does not yet have a schedule to determine when it will be available on the market.

The IOTA token is based on a distributed ledger technology that allows people and machines to transfer money and data without any transaction fees. IOTA trades on digital asset trades and ultimately traded at 27 US cents per chip.

"The smart wallet technology … can be easily adapted to all new vehicles," Dominik Schiener, co-founder of IOTA and co-chair of its board of directors, told Reuters on Friday.

"IOTA wants to allow interoperability with all these different actors. So there is no Jaguar part, no BMW part, but a universal token for this machine economy, "he added.